Produced over 15 years with a commission from the JVC-sponsored Tokyo Video
Festival, Tahimik’s Video Diaries offers a lovely set of accents to his longer works. Tropes and themes that recur throughout the director’s career are set in gemlike relief in these brief yet eloquent videos, which include a loving reminiscence of fatherhood on the
occasion of Tahimik’s 50 th birthday; a tree-planting ritual to celebrate the impending 500 th
anniversary of Magellan’s voyage; a short documentary on the dying practice of rice
terraces, filtered through a homage to Kurosawa; a tribute to the importance of roofs and
the strength of bamboo as a building material; and a healing ritual for an oil spill off the
island of Guimaras.